The Schoolmistress, and other stories eBook

The first-class passenger and the vis-a-vis
looked at each other and burst out laughing.

A TRAGIC ACTOR

IT was the benefit night of Fenogenov, the tragic
actor. They were acting “Prince Serebryany.”
The tragedian himself was playing Vyazemsky; Limonadov,
the stage manager, was playing Morozov; Madame Beobahtov,
Elena. The performance was a grand success.
The tragedian accomplished wonders indeed. When
he was carrying off Elena, he held her in one hand
above his head as he dashed across the stage.
He shouted, hissed, banged with his feet, tore his
coat across his chest. When he refused to fight
Morozov, he trembled all over as nobody ever trembles
in reality, and gasped loudly. The theatre shook
with applause. There were endless calls.
Fenogenov was presented with a silver cigarette-case
and a bouquet tied with long ribbons. The ladies
waved their handkerchiefs and urged their men to applaud,
many shed tears.... But the one who was the most
enthusiastic and most excited was Masha, daughter of
Sidoretsky the police captain. She was sitting
in the first row of the stalls beside her papa; she
was ecstatic and could not take her eyes off the stage
even between the acts. Her delicate little hands
and feet were quivering, her eyes were full of tears,
her cheeks turned paler and paler. And no wonder—­she
was at the theatre for the first time in her life.

“How well they act! how splendidly!” she
said to her papa the police captain, every time the
curtain fell. “How good Fenogenov is!”

And if her papa had been capable of reading faces
he would have read on his daughter’s pale little
countenance a rapture that was almost anguish.
She was overcome by the acting, by the play, by the
surroundings. When the regimental band began playing
between the acts, she closed her eyes, exhausted.

“Papa!” she said to the police captain
during the last interval, “go behind the scenes
and ask them all to dinner to-morrow!”

The police captain went behind the scenes, praised
them for all their fine acting, and complimented Madame
Beobahtov.

“Your lovely face demands a canvas, and I only
wish I could wield the brush!”

And with a scrape, he thereupon invited the company
to dinner.

“All except the fair sex,” he whispered.
“I don’t want the actresses, for I have
a daughter.”

Next day the actors dined at the police captain’s.
Only three turned up, the manager Limonadov, the tragedian
Fenogenov, and the comic man Vodolazov; the others
sent excuses. The dinner was a dull affair.
Limonadov kept telling the police captain how much
he respected him, and how highly he thought of all
persons in authority; Vodolazov mimicked drunken merchants
and Armenians; and Fenogenov (on his passport his name
was Knish), a tall, stout Little Russian with black
eyes and frowning brow, declaimed “At the portals